Marvel: Crisis Protocol – Fighting Thanos Taught Me A Valuable Lesson
I fought Thanos and learned a valuable lesson about tabletop gaming: We need more cooperative style wargames on the tabletop.
Recently, Ben and I have been playing a lot of Marvel: Crisis Protocol. There’s just something about the comic book heroes and the skirmish style game play that speaks to both of us. Maybe it was our (respective) time working in comic book stores. Perhaps it’s the faster gameplay with those cinematic comic book moments splashed in there. Or maybe it’s the fact that I can play a tabletop wargame with a buddy and we can both team-up to take on some massive threats.
It doesn’t hurt that Ben is a ridiculously talented painter and makes everything look awesome.
Thanos, Teacher of Many Lessons
If you’re not aware Marvel: Crisis Protocol has a handful of special scenarios called “Ultimate Encounters” that are designed around a specific character. Most of these are available on their website. However, some of them are in the character’s box. Thanos is part of the latter case. His Ultimate Encounter is considered one of the tougher fights. As it should be: he’s juiced.
Anyhow, the fight itself revolves around two Crisis Teams facing off against the Mad Titan. He’s got the power of the Infinity Gauntlet at his disposal. He’s already super tough and he also calls in back-up if you manage to injure him. His Black Order comes in swinging, too. This fight can be played as a 2v1 scenario — that’s how it’s designed. However, we opted to play our two teams vs Thanos with us controlling and rolling for him.
We did our best to ask “what’s the worse thing for us that Thanos can do / what would you do as Thanos?” And then we would do that. It typically involved him punching and/or throwing our heaviest hitters. Sometimes into our other heavy hitters. And it worked pretty well! We also randomized which Infinity Stone he would use because that felt a bit more manageable. We still used them as effectively as we could however.
Was that the most optimal strategy? No. However, we were already trying to decide what to do for our own teams that this little bit of randomness helped us both actually play the game. Decision fatigue is a thing, especially after a long day at work (which is typically when we would have time to throwdown). Sometimes you just want to roll the dice and do what they tell you.
Thanos’ dice usually told us to get punched in the face. Hard.
We had a good time. Things looked good, then they looked bad, then they looked better and then… the game ended. Mechanically, the scenario has some interesting mechanics and if you can keep those in mind you’ve got a good shot at winning. But that wasn’t really the lesson Thanos taught me. What I really learned was that cooperative games are a lot of fun — and I think we should have more of them in tabletop wargaming.
Cooperative Mode Engaged
While we have played a fair share of games against each other these sorts of team-up games are a different kind of fun for me. It’s more relaxed and we can “take the gloves off” so to speak. Sometimes I feel a twinge of guilt if Wolverine happens to K.O.’s two characters because of hot dice when I’m playing against Ben. But when Logan is carving up Thanos so we can both win? That’s a “Feels Good” moment. It’s cool to play a game when the person across from you is cheering your success and cursing your failures with you instead of the opposite for once.
And please, don’t get this twisted: I’m all for good, healthy competitive play. I’ve done the tournament thing and brought the pain in that setting. But sometimes it’s just nice to be able to redirect some of that competitive energy towards a “faceless” CPU and cut loose — and not feel any guilt for unloading on them.
I also found that when we first started playing MCP the cooperative style scenarios were a good way to learn the mechanics. I’ve been working on a side project to run Sentinels as the antagonists in their own co-op style scenario based on the Ultron “All Will Be Metal” AI combat rules. With a pretty basic flow chart and some custom objectives it worked pretty well in my initial playtest with Ben. It needs some tweaks but it was a great way to play a low stress version of the game while still learning and working out the kinks.
The scenario might be inspired by a 90’s X-Men show…just sayin.
Cooperative gaming might not be for everyone. Some folks might think it’s “too easy” or “watered down.” I’d argue you’re just not playing the right games then. Go try Arkham Horror: The Card Game (or the new edition of the Board Game) if you think co-op games are too easy. I’m a BIG fan of that setting and those games as well. I also think a lot of challenge involves finding the right difficulty. If you’ve ever been the DM’s side of the screen you know what I’m talking about. But that’s the fun of these co-op games as you can typically scale them up or down based on how confident (or cocky) you’re feeling.
Thanos too easy? Maybe try Hard mode next time…
I’d love to see more tabletop wargames and skirmish games embrace more of these co-op scenarios. They make for great ways to teach the game and can still provide a challenge to veterans. I find it’s also easier to convince my friends to play a cooperative game vs a competitive game. And if you’ve already got the miniatures and a buddy then I suggest you give a couple of these MCP Ultimate Encounters a shot. They have been a blast so far! Ben and I have already got our next Ultimate Encounter lined up. Here’s a little spoiler:
Let us know what you think of cooperative tabletop wargaming. And if you’ve got any specific systems or stories about them share them as well. I want to what games I should try next!
For more awesome shots from Ben’s work check him out on instagram at @t00mini. You might just see pics of our next game there…
